An Inspiring, Inclusive Learning Community at Ballenas Secondary

Last week, I had the pleasure of my first visit to the adapted p.e./leisure studies elective at Ballenas Secondary School in Parksville, BC  last week.  It instantly became my new favorite learning space to visit in our district.

This inclusive environment consists of 10 life skills students- some of whom are non-verbal, all of whom are significantly impacted cognitively, 10 of their neuro-typical peers, a handful of Educational Assistants., and their fabulous PE teacher, Sherri McKee.    This semester, the week alternates between a PE block one day, and some kind of community activity-  work experience, or learning to ride a bus, or doing a service project of some sort, on the other.  Next semester, it will alternate between p.e. and a shop class.  It is a new course that was initiated by the elective teachers last spring, as they went looking for environments and ways to include more students in their classrooms in meaningful ways.

Upon entering the room, I was greeted with huge smiles by the peer leaders and life skills students alike.  The gymnastics circuit consisted of mats on the floor,  rubber mat “stepping stones”, benches for balancing on, and a table to commando-crawl under.  Students were happily dancing to music, rolling along the mats, assisting each other with walking forwards and backwards on the benches.  When the teacher pulled the group into a circle, the EAs stood back to allow the kids space in the group-  and EVERYONE, (I really mean everyone)-  sat down in the circle, watched the demonstration, clapped when peers demonstrated the skills.  A number of students enthusiastically leapt to the front when asked to assist.  I’ve known some of these students for years, and I’ve never seen some of them head to a teacher-directed activity without being led there by an adult.

  

One of these students is a young man with Down’s Syndrome.  He had arrived in a stroller accompanied by the two EAs for safety reasons.  As soon as he crossed the threshold of the doorway, he unbuckled,  went straight to his partner and copied the warm-up stretch.  One of his EAs left, the other stood a ways back from the group.   Another young woman, who is hearing impaired and significantly impacted by her sensory sensitivities, has seldom joined activities with peers in classrooms, dropped right to hands and knees to follow a friend crawling on the circuit under the table.   She emerged seconds later with a huge grin on her face.
 

I was also thrilled to see a young man who is tremendously anxious when there are others in his physical space head over to a peer who was moving to music, smile at him, and join in the dance.  A couple of grade 11, six-foot-plus boys, leapt up to hold the hands of their buddies, as they worked to balance on a bench, walk gingerly backwards on it.  Every minute or so, there would be a big cheer,  as their partners successfully jumped on the mat at the end.  Once I’d worked through holding back the tears in my eyes,  I took some pictures so I’d be able to share my excitement.

Jane Reynolds, Vice Principal at the school, tells me that she’s seen the benefits of this class spill into other environments – she’s heard the peer leaders planning in the hallway at lunch, as they problem-solve to help peers engage even more successfully in the class.  She sees students who have never spent time together before seek each other out to “hang out” and eat together at lunch time.   These students are not spending time together because they have been assigned to a block of electives together.  They are developing genuine, deep connections with one another. 

At Ballenas Secondary School, this inclusive learning community is a beautiful and inspiring example of what can happen when kids and adults alike understand that They Are All Our Kids.

Thinking Critically About Classrooms

If you've been glancing at what I've been reading at all, you'll see I've been reflecting on the most recent offering of Roland Case and Garfield Gini-Newman from the Critical Thinking Consortium- titled Creating Thinking Classrooms.

I was lucky enough this past week to spend a day with Roland Case at our administrators' annual retreat, where we explored ways and reasons to shift traditional lesson structures and provide more differentiated, inclusive, engaging ways to help our students learn to problem-solve and to think critically.  Roland really put us through our paces-  challenging us to personally experience some of the lessons he's used with students in classrooms, and to think about ways to ask really good questions of our students-  the type of questions that help them to reflect, synthesize, make connections-  really learn to be learners, and not just learn to provide right answers.

In his book, Roland states that "many existing practices and the proposals for new practices will succeed only if they embody powerful principles of effective teaching and learning."  Case argues that the key areas to address are to:
-  engage students
-  sustain inquiry
-  nurture self-regulated learners
-  create assessment-rich learning
-  enhance learning through digital technology.

When I reflect on these principles through the lens of inclusion, I can't find one thing on the list that isn't a critical piece of planning for our more complex students.  It's certainly the list I hope teachers are thinking about when planning things for my own children at their school.

I had an opportunity to chat with one of our district's learning services teachers about a student who is really struggling with the math curriculum this year.  He was concerned not only about her progress with mathematics, but about the fact that, even in a heavily adapted environment, the material was still out of reach for her a lot of the time, and that she had left class that day in tears.

We brainstormed a little about ways that the current day's lesson could be adapted for next time, and I think we have a plan for the next little bit-  but we were both aware that something more radically different than just tweaked assignments is needed for this student to have success.

That conversation led me back to some of the activities that we worked through with Roland.  In particular, we worked on a line graph assignment where we were asked to set our own parameters for the axis, and then draw a line which told a story where we travelled a distance over time.  Some of us got going right away, most of us needed his example to get started, a few of us needed a bit of coaching from a peer or from Roland personally.  All of us had to really think about what we were doing, and then reflect on our choices critically in order to see if the story our partner was suggesting  was accurate.  I personally thought I had it, drew a line quickly, then scribbled a bunch of changes while talking to my partner and finally, went back to where I started as I talked it through and my understanding deepened.  If it had been a worksheet, or less open ended, I would have ended with the first drawing, and missed the best part of my thinking.

So...back to the challenge of supporting the young lady in her math class.  If I think about her experience in terms of Roland's principles, the path becomes clearer for me.  At the moment, she's engaged.  That's where her frustration is coming from.  She desperately wants to be successful, but is not yet able to sustain her inquiry because we're asking questions she's not confidently or comfortably able to explore.  We need to reframe things in an open-ended way to allow her to enter the conversation from the place she's currently at.  We can only expect her to self-regulate if she has the capacity and confidence to tackle the tasks we offer her.  What kind of assessment can we possibly complete if we're giving her work we already know she can't do before we ask it of her.  We were using calculators for that particular lesson, but we have so many other options as well -  virtual manipulatives (have you peeked at the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives????  Google NLVM if you haven't seen it-  transformed my math classroom, but more on that another day....)-  we could show some video tutorials, or record some examples for her to follow-  all of these are options-  but what's landed as the question for me this week is, "How would Roland do it?" 

I've just been given access to the myriad of resources in the Critical Thinking Consortium's website (http://tc2.ca/). That's where I'm going to start.  I plan to head back to the teacher and see if, together, we can build an open-ended frame for some of the concepts he's planning on tackling in the next little while.  There's no doubt in my mind that what will support this student will support all of the students in this classroom.  If his experience with this type of supported task is anything like mine was last week, the approach will gain momentum quickly.  It feels good to think about things deeply and feel better at it when the assignment's done.    It just makes sense to find things we can all explore together.  A classroom is a community-  and after all, THEY'RE ALL OUR KIDS.

Envisioning Inclusive Classrooms

 

This fall, I've been engaged in conversations at a variety of schools with caring, dedicated educators who are struggling to find the most successful way to be inclusive of all learners in their classrooms.  I know of many people who are open to embracing the diversity in their classroom spaces, but do not always know how, or when, to provide options or supports, to allow all learners to get the most out of their experiences.  Knowing this is problem-solving that we do every fall as we meet new children and begin to build community, I went seeking a resource over the summer that might help guide our fall conversations.

 I found June Downing's Academic Instruction for Students with Moderate and Severe Intellectual Disabilities in Inclusive Classrooms.    How I've not encountered June Downing's work prior to now, I'll never know-  what a practical and pragmatic approach.  I'm looking forward to exploring some of her other books...

This particular text has a chapter where she explores something she's titled an Ecological Assessment.  Downing argues that undertaking an "observational assessment [which] occurs in the natural environment, where the demands and impact of that environment can be seen....is a valuable approach to assessing student with severe disabilities."  These focused observations, first of the class as a whole, and then of individual students in that environment, allow teachers to determine what students are expected to be able to do in the environment, and what natural supports exist to support them.  For me, the most lovely part of this type of observation is the underlying assumption that ALL learners are PART OF the learning community, and that there is at least a foundational set of expectations and goals that are achievable for everyone.   Here are some sample tables from the book: 

  

While I was excited about the potential of Ecological Assessments as a strategy for enhancing inclusive classroom practices, and for framing IEP goals, the strategy was not as accessible for some of my colleagues as I had hoped-  not everyone had spent the summer immersed in the ideas presented in the book, and it is a lot to process in the first weeks of a new school year.

Last week, our school district was fortunate enough to spend a morning with Shelley Moore-  (you'll see her name on my blog roll)-  an exceptionally talented BC educator who has reframed what is essentially an Ecological Assessment into a simplified planning document.  She encourages teachers to consider the physical, social/emotional, and curricular aspects of the learning community, to think about what ALL students should be able to do in that environment, and then find a place of connection for the students who need additional time or support to access them. 

Shelley and I come from a similar perspective.  It's not IF a student can/should participate, it's HOW.   Inclusion is a complex process, and it may not be possible to include everyone in every environment right away-  but that should be the end-goal for all students-  and if we all choose one place to begin, we'll get much closer to reaching that goal.

By observing all students and the learning environment carefully, it becomes much easier to determine what things ALL students are able to do, as well as illuminating the types of structures and supports to be more inclusive of EVERYONE. 


For example, in a content classroom, a student might be in there practicing regulating behavior, his social/emotional goal might be to greet peers, and his learning might be to participate in a partner reading activity or  have hand-over-hand support from a peer or adult during a science project. 

Shelley was also part of developing a new course for SET-BC called Curriculum For All - a great set of modules for people to work through individually, or in groups.  In our district, we're looking forward to hosting some sessions for classroom teachers, support teachers, administrators and educational assistants, to do some learning about UDL and inclusion together.  You can link to it at:  http://www.setbc.org/course/curriculum-for-all/. 


I can't wait to discover the ways our learners find themselves in environments that they've never explored before as we work together to make inclusion happen.  It takes a village.  They're All Our Kids.